Ms Patricia Murphy:

The nature of the levy is that it did not come within the scope of the report. It is a temporary levy that was not imposed by the industry. It was not considered with the scope of the report.

That comes under the remit of the Minister for Finance and I have very limited information on it.

In the context of the position internationally, the situation in the UK was examined when the report was being compiled in order to see how Ireland compares. The findings in the report indicate that our occupational pension schemes compare quite reasonably with those in the UK in the context of costs. However, they also show that individual arrangements are likely to be more expensive than in the UK. The latter is currently moving to the NEST pension scheme and the charge relating to this is very low. On the occupational side, costs can generally be reasonable when compared to those in the UK. On the individual side, however, they are expensive.